Curing heat curable materials disposed within cavities, such as potting compounds within aerospace panels, can be challenging. The curing process often involves heating various surrounding components and/or disassembly and subsequent reassembly of the components. For example, a heat curable material may be disposed within a cavity of an internal component stacked between two external components. In order to cure this heat curable material, at least one of the external components may be heated using an external heater, such as a heat blanket. This approach relies on the heat transfer through the external component to the heat curable material. Otherwise, the external component does not need to be heated. Often, it may not be desirable to heat this external component, e.g., when the component may deteriorate during curing. Furthermore, this external heating approach may be slow, require lots of heating energy, and involve heating of at least one other component (often many other components are heated as well) besides the heat curable material.
In some instances, heat transfer characteristics of other heated components may interfere with the heat transfer. For example, components with good heat transfer characteristics may cause heat dissipation and may actually transfer heat away from the heat curable material. This may cause undesirable heating of other components and/or insufficient curing of the heat curable material. Furthermore, various heated components may operate as heat sinks requiring additional heating energy thereby increasing the overall processing time, energy, and reducing processing efficiency in comparison to direct heating of the heat curable material described herein. On the other side, components with poor heat transfer characteristics may act as heat transfer barriers and blocking the heat transfer to the heat curable material.
Furthermore, heating of the other components may be undesirable in some instances. For example, these components may be made from heat sensitive materials and may change their characteristics (e.g., melt, or change the desire heat treat properties, or change various properties of thermoplastic or thermoset laminates by subsequent reheating after being previously cured) while attempting to cure the heat curable material. Overall, more efficient means of curing heat curable materials disposed within cavities are needed.